This Little Trick
by RoxieFlash
Summary: Time Lords have this little trick - a way of cheating death. But there's no way of avoiding the heartbreak that comes with it, and this new incarnation must prove to Rose Tyler that she hasn't lost her Doctor.


New legs were always the hardest to get used to. His previous pair had been made for things like stomping about and lurching away in a huff, but these new ones just didn't seem to want to do either. In fact, they seemed downright determined to land him flat on his face. This was the second time he'd tripped over his own feet and fallen, face-first, into the grating of the TARDIS hallway, and it was becoming something of a problem.

The trainers helped a bit. He wasn't sure how he'd ever gotten around with those gargantuan blocks of leather strapped to his feet. Thank goodness Rose had managed to remove them, or he might've ended up losing more than his hand to the Sycorax.

At least, the Doctor thought with a shudder, he _hoped_ it had been Rose doing all the changing, or he was going to have nightmares for the rest of his stupidly long life. As tolerable as Jackie Tyler had miraculously become, there were still boundaries. Heavily fortified boundaries.

Pushing himself up, the Doctor dusted off his coat – it was really such a _fantastic_ coat, he though to himself as he hummed a few bars of 'Summertime' - and walked the last few steps to his original destination. The kitchen door stood open, and he peeked his head inside it.

"Rose?" he called. Counters clean, chairs empty, sink positively shining – but no Rose, not anywhere.

The Doctor caught himself pouting. His old body had definitely _not_ been designed for pouting. Brooding, yes, and more of that than was probably healthy, but never pouting. He took note of how this new expression felt on his new face before stepping back into the hallway. There wasn't much to be done except to continue on, hoping that Rose was behind one of the doors. But there were an awful lot of doors to go through, and by the time he looked through them all she would be quite old, and he would probably regenerate from sheer boredom. But that didn't stop him - he'd look through each of them by hand if he had to, if only to assure himself that Rose hadn't gone.

_Please_, he thought at his—frankly magnificent—time ship, making sure to use those exact words in an attempt to get on her good side. _I just need to check if she's all right._

The TARDIS huffed in his mind.

"It's not _my_ fault," responded the Doctor, indignantly. "I didn't regenerate on_ purpose_."

The TARDIS - who was still quite miffed about being sent away from the Gamestation without a choice in the matter - let him know, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn't too sure if she believed him. The Doctor sighed - this was where the old him would've shouted a bit, displaying his impressive prowess with human profanity, and threatened to take the TARDIS apart piece by piece to get to the stored information he wanted, if he were in a cross enough mood. (He'd never actually _do_ it, mind, but his last incarnation had a glorious talent for ominous threats. It was the voice, probably.)

Knowing as he did that this was how he _would_ have reacted, he just didn't feel the drive for that kind of response. Not anymore. _This _body was a bit tired, a bit sad, and more than a bit concerned that even after everything they'd just been through, everything they'd seen and done together, that regeneration would be the thing that finally drove Rose away for good. And oh, _oh_ he couldn't lose her now. Not after being awestruck by her infinite splendor, by that breathtaking image that burned in his mind—the bright gold of her, glorious and shining and _forever, _framed in the TARDIS doorway. Not with those words _– I want you safe, my Doctor_ - still ringing in his ears. And definitely not with the taste of her still on his tongue.

And _oh, _how this tongue remembered. He wanted to roll her taste in his mouth like a fine wine, savoring every aspect of her humanity, leaning down and breathing in that essence of Rose Tyler that wafted up from the vein that pulsed in her temple. Yes, this was definitely a body made for tasting.  
The Doctor closed his eyes and leaned back against the corridor wall, shoving his hands inside the dimensionally transcendental pockets of his coat and retrieving a bag of jelly babies. He scuffed the rubber of his trainer soles against the grating beneath his feet and worried a jelly baby between his teeth, thinking. Oh, Rose'd said there'd be no argument from her, sure. And for a little while it'd been just the same as it'd been before - but then he'd excused himself to the TARDIS to change out of Howard's jim-jams, and things'd gone - different. The companionable silence turned awkward, and when she'd offered to retrieve his jacket, just for a moment - with all that had happened that day, losing a hand and Harriet Jones and the way Rose beamed at him as she'd tossed him the sword - he'd forgotten. But he wouldn't forget the way her face fell, the awkward it's-fine-but-it's-not expression, because suddenly it was almost as though she was trying very hard to believe he wasn't a Slitheen, again.

A loud _crack!_ jerked the Doctor out of his reverie. The unexpected sharp noise startled him so that he launched himself off the wall and took a hurried step forward, misjudged the length of his legs (again) and jammed his toes right into the grating.

"Rassilon's _teeth_!" he managed to force through his clenched jaw. When he forced his watering eyes back open, he noticed a door to his left that hadn't been there a moment before. He blinked rapidly, clearing his vision, and saw a small, delicate rose carved in the upper right-hand corner. The TARDIS hummed a warning in his mind—_B__e gentle, _it seemed to say. He turned the knob and pushed slowly, finding himself once again in the wardrobe room.  
"Rose?" he whispered.

He didn't get an answer, but really, he hadn't been expecting one. The wardrobe room was just as he'd left it nearly an hour ago: cool and dark, with no sign of another occupant.

He was just about to leave the room when he heard it, just faintly: the soft pulsing of a single human heartbeat, accompanied by the almost imperceptible push-pull of measured, even breathing in the air. Rose _was_ in here- and she was _asleep._

The Doctor's lips quirked upwards - of course, of _course_ she would be tired - what a day they'd had! He followed the soft human sounds until he found himself on the third floor down, surrounded by high-heeled shoes and sparkly scarves and a dress he was pretty sure either Sarah Jane or Victoria wore at some point. Rose had claimed this area of the wardrobe room as hers not long after she'd come aboard - and so further in it was draped with hoodies and discarded jeans. He stopped, briefly, to pick up her favorite, the pink one with _Punky Fish_ printed on the back, feeling a swell of emotion in his chest.  
It was then that he noticed her - tucked underneath a low-hanging rack of clothes, knees to her chest and head tilted slightly to the side, looking incomprehensibly small and wrapped in something large and black…

…oh.

Without thinking the hoodie slipped from his fingers and the Doctor crossed the distance to her and knelt. Light from somewhere behind him spilled across her face as he moved clothes aside to get to her, revealing Rose, wrapped in his leather jacket, face messy with mascara and tear tracks.

The Doctor sighed as he reached to brush the hair out of her eye, unable to keep himself from touching her.

"Oh, Rose."


End file.
